


Smoke Signals

by yikesola



Series: Commissions [16]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Early Days, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, University, pre-2009, pre-Dan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29680467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: It’s not like Phil is doing anything wrong. It just feels like he is. But he’s not. He knows he’s not. He knows that there’s nothing wrong with being gay and nothing wrong with wanting to kiss a guy and nothing wrong with deciding to set up a dating profile for that explicit purpose.A fic about bravery and trying
Relationships: Phil Lester/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Commissions [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1469918
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	Smoke Signals

**Author's Note:**

> This was a commissioned piece for [Megan](http://letgladnessdwell.tumblr.com) 💞 and endless thanks to [Keelin](http://ahappydnp.tumblr.com) for the hand holding✨

Phil opens a private browsing tab even though he’s the only one who uses his laptop. This isn’t like being back at home where his parents would grab whichever electronic was nearer because they simply don’t understand that sometimes a boy has to google quizzes and _Spike shirtless_ in Google images. He’s at uni now. He has a room with a lock and housemates to ostensibly understand privacy. At least, they do when everyone is sober. The first week saw a lot of privacy chucked out the window, but they were all warming up to being away from home and Phil has no reason to think they’d be snooping on his laptop now. 

Still, he hits the private window and even checks over his shoulder just to make sure his door is closed. 

It’s not like he’s doing anything wrong. 

It just feels like he is. In the great lump in his stomach which has nothing to do with the milkshake he had spent too much money on that afternoon. 

But he’s not. He knows he’s not. He _knows_ that there’s nothing wrong with being gay and nothing wrong with wanting to kiss a guy and nothing wrong with deciding to set up a dating profile for that explicit purpose. 

Knowing something and feeling something are different. 

He feels like he’s every possible disappointment a person can be rolled into one tall and skinny body. Which is why he ends up closing the private browser without ever typing anything into the search bar, and burying himself under his duvet that still smells a little like home even if he’s been in York for six weeks now. 

-

Maybe Phil doesn’t need a dating site. Maybe he can imitate the romcoms he’s absorbed through cultural osmosis. Chat someone up at the grocery, pay for someone’s drink at a club, find a study buddy in one of his classes and do little to no studying with them. 

But that would involve Phil managing not to trip on his tongue or on his feet, and he isn’t sure he can actually pull that off. Plus, he’s terrified of assuming someone is gay and then being proven wrong. He’s also terrified of assuming someone is gay and then being proven right. That’s a little worse somehow; because it means that maybe someone can do the same for him. Maybe people can smell the gay on him. Maybe he actually has a holographic rainbow above his head at all times and he simply can’t see it because like vampires the holographic rainbow can’t be reflected in mirrors or photographs. And that would be terrible. 

Wouldn’t it? 

A dating site takes care of that. A dating site is him choosing the rainbow holograph, and choosing to let other gay people see it. 

The first time he lets his face break into a relieved smile instead of the tense frown he’s been wearing since opening another private tab four days after trying the first time, is when he sees the option to click a box labelled _I do not want to see or be seen by straight people_

Fuck, that’d be a handy little button to have just in everyday life, he thinks. 

The other boxes are less simple. He wants to say he has black hair because he’s been dying it for a while now, but is that lying about his secret ginger roots something that would make or break a future relationship? 

He realizes as he stares at the blinking cursor under a box saying _Tell us about yourself!_ that he doesn’t know how to, like, sell himself? He could send applications to uni saying he thinks he’s worth attending this school, he can make videos on YouTube saying he thinks he’s worth two or three minutes of a viewer’s time.

But saying he’s worth dating? He’s worth _wanting_? 

Because that’s what it comes down to, right? He wants someone to want him. Wants someone to think he’s fit and funny and to go out on a date with and not feel like it’s a wasted night. But how the hell is he supposed to say that? What makes him any better, or even any different, than any other guy in York who is looking to connect with other guys? 

The only things he can think of that make him different are things that just make him worse. Make him weird. 

And he can’t just open with, “I’m awkward and spend too much time on the internet and am too much of a chicken to call the hairdresser so I literally make my mum do it, isn’t that appealing? Isn’t that sexy? That’s what you want in a boyfriend, right?”

It’s upsettingly presumptuous. How in the world do people do this literally every day? Millions of people every single day decide yes, they’re good enough. Yes, someone is lucky to have them. Phil doesn’t know how to think that, or at least how to believe it. But he _wants_ to know. And he _wants_ so fucking badly to be wanted. 

He almost closes the browser again rather than trying to fill in those many many boxes. Instead he writes the first thing that comes to mind about liking horror films and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and figures he can always change it later.

-

It takes a few hours for Phil to pluck up the courage to check the dating site again. When he does there are a few messages and the little four over the envelope icon is almost overwhelming. 

Two of them just say “Hey.” Phil sends “hey” right back and clicks on their profiles to see if he wants to add anything else. 

The third says, “So are you actually gay or are you some bullshit bicurious slut?” and it actually makes Phil feel a little ill the longer he stares at the screen. He doesn’t even know how to respond to it, but it feels awful to just say nothing and let a jerk like this wander the world thinking that’s a remotely okay thing to say. Phil isn’t brave enough though, he just clicks delete and feels too bad to look at the fourth message. 

The next morning he sees that whoever had sent the last message had actually deactivated their account in the intermittent time. So he really hopes that wasn’t meant to be his soulmate or anything. 

But the two heys from before have answered him. He starts trying to make conversation despite it feeling like walking through waist-high mud. He even gives one of them his phone number. 

-

Phil hears his phone buzz under his cheek. It’s what wakes him up. He adjusts his crooked glasses— still on his face because he hadn’t meant to fall asleep— and sees the time is half 2am. The message is from a number he doesn’t recognize, and which he never will recognize because he blocks it after seeing the message is a dick pick. Not even a good one, at that. 

And sure, his half-asleep brain isn’t up to deciding what would be the difference between a good and bad dick pick, but he has a feeling the fact it was unsolicited skewed the results. The room is dark again when his phone screen stops shining and he falls back asleep. 

-

Uni Phil tries new things. Not just the dating site— in fact, he hasn’t even been back on that in ages— but going to parties and attempting to be social. He feels like he _almost_ pulls it off. Sometimes it feels like acting, and he knows he’s not exactly a convincing actor. But he’s trying. 

Is it still brave to try if he feels like he’s bricking it the entire time? 

He thinks some old Disney VHSs from his childhood tried to imply as much. 

Tonight’s party is a bit bigger than the others he’s braved. His housemate brought him and she knew someone who knew someone. So all these someone’s are here and it makes the place feel tight and cramped. Or maybe it’s just Phil who feels that way. 

He feels a little less tight and cramped as he takes gulps of his too-sweet drink. He can’t even taste the vodka. 

“There’s a stripper here,” someone says. “A bloke.” 

“What?” Phil’s head pops up. 

“Yeah, I made sure they sent over a gay one,” the friend of his housemate laughs into her drink. “You know, so it wouldn’t be weird.” 

Phil will never pretend to understand straight logic. 

The music switches abruptly between songs and Phil can only assume it’s because the stripper requires something specific. He’s somehow a little bit relieved that it seems sex workers like Britney Spear’s “Toxic” just as much as he does. 

Phil looks. Of course, he looks. He’s tucked away by a bookshelf and his fringe is covering half his face, but he’s only human. So he looks. 

The part of his brain that is trying to make him blush because he’s looking gets distracted by the surprising amount of skill involved. Phil would’ve accidentally torn off two or three buttons by now, he thinks. Sure, Phil can thrust his hips. He can put his butt on things. But he sees the stripper do some kind of spin on his heel and Phil knows if he tried that he’d fall flat on his face.

He likes looking. The guy is hot— it’s his job to be hot. 

But it’s also only satisfying something in Phil’s gut. The same satisfaction when he gets off to porn or makes out with a guy in the back of a club. 

There’s a different itch that isn’t being scratched. And when he gets home from the party, feeling the world spin as he lays in his bed, he opens his laptop and logs into the dating site he had avoided for about seventeen days. 

-

Phil has already downed half his coffee and he would feel bad about that being rude, but the guy he’s supposed to be meeting at the near-campus cafe is almost forty minutes late. And stopped replying to Phil’s texts thirty five minutes ago. And surely that’s more rude. 

He’s going to give it twenty more minutes. On one hand so he can finish his drink. On the other so he’ll be out of the house long enough so his friends don’t have to know he got stood up. 

It doesn’t even hurt to think that, though Phil figures maybe it should. Stood up, he got stood up. Someone bothered to message him, bothered to chat with him, bothered to step up a date. And then didn’t bother to show. It should hurt, such overt rejection. But as Phil keeps sipping his coffee he thinks about how any disappointment has been pushed away by relief. 

Maybe he’s not as brave as he’s been trying to be. 

-

 _not to be an absolute creep, but are you in the library rn?_

Phil reads the message and feels himself go into meerkat mode, straightening his spine and scanning around the room. He sees someone looking at him already, someone that looks exactly like the profile picture on the dating site he’s currently chatting with between classes. He smiles and responds, “Stalking me?” 

The guy, Aaron, smiles at his laptop. Phil watches him close it, pack it in his messenger bag, and walk up to him to library-whisper, “Wanna walk or something?” 

He doesn’t want to accidentally scream like his fluttering tummy is telling him too, so he just nods and logs out of the computer. 

They get out of the library but Phil still feels tongue tied. Luckily Aaron does not have that problem— he talks about being an Archaeology major and growing up in Liverpool and how he spent the last summer in Turkey. Phil listens and laughs at what he hopes is the right places, but mostly he just looks. 

Aaron is a little close to what he and his friends used to deride as townies, but he’s cute and that mostly makes up for it. He kinda wonders what a guy like this sees in a wannabe emo but… there’s no accounting for taste.

They keep walking and Aaron keeps talking and eventually they end up in front of a building on campus which Phil has never had a class in but which Aaron says he’s gotta be in a few minutes. “Talk to you later, yeah?” he smiles, reaching for Phil’s hand and giving it one quick squeeze before letting go. 

“Yeah,” Phil smiles. “Cool,” he says, though he’s never felt so uncool and he turns to go and trips over his feet. 

He spends the entire walk back to the library wondering if that counted as a date. 

-

The next time he sees Aaron is definitely a date. They grab fish and chips and eat them in the park, Aaron talks as easily as he did last time and Phil let’s him. That’s definitely a date, the figures. Especially after their done eating when Aaron runs a hand through his highlighted hair and asks if Phil wants to come back to his place. 

Phil feels a little over full and greasy from their budget picnic, but he says yes and listens to Aaron talk as they walk through campus. 

In fact the only time it seems Aaron isn’t interested in talking is once the door to his bedroom closes and he pulls Phil in for a kiss. 

It’s nice. It’s a nice kiss. Nothing to complain about. 

But a few minutes in there’s something in the back of Phil’s mind that he realizes has been there the whole time. Something he hasn’t bothered naming, but now knows. Boredom. He’s bored. Aaron is so fucking boring. 

And he feels like shit for thinking that, Aaron is _nice_ , there’s nothing _wrong_ with him, but Phil is so damn bored and he doesn’t know what to do other than pull back and apologize and say he has to get going. 

“No worries,” Aaron says. And Phil thinks he means it, because he really is just a nice dude. “Call me, yeah?” 

Phil lies and says that he will, because he feels so bad already. And because he just might; being boring isn’t a cardinal sin after all. 

-

Phil avoids the dating site for a whole two months out of guilt for ghosting Aaron. Can he even be greedy enough to ask the universe for a date if he’s just gonna be an ass as soon as he gets one? 

But then there are too many weekends in a row where his housemates make pointed comments about him not having plans. And there are too many moments roughly thirty seconds after he’s finished wanking where he feels cold and broken and unwanted— which is pretty fucking unfair considering how good he had felt during and how he knows he isn’t actually any of those things. He’s just… single. 

There are worse things he could be than single. 

But he could also try doing something about it, he figures, and logs back in to the dreaded site. He spends about an hour and a half trying to make his bio sound a little less insufferable while answering messages in between. He takes the compliments he’s given and holds them close to his chest, making himself take them at face value because he can’t bear questioning their earnestness right now. Not as Saturday becomes Sunday, at least according to the clock. 

At some point he thinks about that saying, the one about how the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That sounds about right. 

Then he nearly jumps out of his skin because of a clanging of pots and pans downstairs. He hears his housemate Laura mutter, “Fuck,” then more clanging, then, “shit!” 

He closes his laptop and goes to check on her. She’s sat on the floor under the sink, looking drunk and happy despite the mess of kitchen stuff around her. 

“Alright there?” Phil smiles. 

Laura nods. Phil thinks about helping her up and bringing her to sit at the table, and might have if he wasn’t already feeling so discouraged himself. There’s something about sitting on the floor when you already feel low that just can’t be beat. So he joins her, clearing a space to lean his bent back against the cabinet. 

“You didn’t go out tonight?” She asks him. 

“Why? Do I not look blitzed out of my mind,” he smiles. 

“Not even,” she laughs, taking a gurgling sip of her water. “You were probably revising or something more responsible than me.”

Phil wonders how he ever gave her the impression he’s someone who revises, but doesn’t think it’s her fault she doesn’t know him well. He’s probably just been too introverted for her. 

“You know, I think I lost my knickers,” she says, shifting her crossed legs and proving his point. 

“Hope you have more than one pair,” he says. 

Laura laughs. It’s a kind, bright laugh. “You’re funny, Lester.” 

“Thanks.” He holds that compliment in his chest with the ones from before. 

“So you didn’t go out?” she asks again, because she’s drunk and only paying so much attention. 

“No,” Phil shakes his head. “I’ve, er, just been slogging through some online dating.” 

He doesn’t exactly know why he told her the truth. 

But it does feel weirdly nice to have told _someone_. 

Her eyes go wide and she takes another deep drink of water. “Shit, you have balls,” she says. “I could never!” 

Phil doesn’t know what to say, so says nothing. 

“Seriously,” Laura looks at him. She’s staring in that way drunk people aren’t afraid to do, that open vulnerable way sober people simply don’t. “Like I can go out to the club and have someone chat me up, but putting yourself out there like that? Amazing.” 

“That’s why they call me AmazingPhil,” he says, though he’s pretty sure he hasn’t even told her about his channel. She might know, he doesn’t keep it a secret, but considering this is the first proper chat they’ve ever had and she’s unlikely to even remember her half of it, he’s not counting on her recognizing his username. 

But she does laugh that bright laugh again. “Fuck, you’re funny.” She leans her head back against the cabinets. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re funny, Lester?” 

-

He fills Laura’s glass with water for her when she runs out, and he helps her figure out which closed door in the hallway leads to her bedroom. Then he’s back in his own room and it feels weirdly quiet and empty. 

He opens his laptop and suddenly the room is less empty because the internet is there. Youtube and MySpace and chat rooms, and the dating site he wants so badly to like. 

He thinks about Laura’s almost too sincere praise. Maybe it is insanity to keep trying to find someone. But maybe it’s also brave. 

He sees a little one over the envelope icon. “Oh my goddddd I love Buffy too! What’s ur favourite season?” someone with a big smile and a fluffy dog in his profile picture has sent.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/644027231118688256/smoke-signals) !


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